Citation

Meyerhoff JL, Norris W, Saviolakis GA, Wollert T, Burge B, Atkins V, Spielberger C. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 2004; 1032: 250-253.

Affiliation

Department of Neuroendocrinology, Division of Neuroscience, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), 503 Robert Grant Ave., Silver Spring, MD 20910, USA. james.meyerhoff@na.amedd.army.mil

Copyright

(Copyright © 2004, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1196/annals.1314.031

PMID

15677421

Abstract

Police trainees who were ready to graduate from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) volunteered to participate in an exercise designed to evaluate their survivability. In a highly stressful interactive scenario, which included a hostage situation, performance was evaluated for a range of responses, including: shooting judgment and accuracy, communications, and coping with a weapon malfunction. Nineteen percent of subjects shot the hostage, a failure rate that falls in the reported range of friendly fire casualties in military combat. The Spielberger Trait Anger Scale showed an association with shot placement and performance during the gunfight as well as with overall performance scores.